Information center has rental laptop computers for student use

School brings a lot of caffeine, headaches, all-nighters, sweat and tears to SIUC students who struggle every day to balance the weight of homework and jobs. For some students there just doesn’t seem to be enough time in a day to do it all.

But the Student Center is offering a solution that will keep some students from making that routine sprint to and from Morris Library and campus computer labs.

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The Information Station, located on the first floor of the Student Center, has received a grant which enables the rental of laptop computers to students so they can do their homework and search the Internet.

Duane Neely, assistant supervisor at the station, said students will definitely enjoy having such quality equipment at their disposal, which will become a reality the week after spring break. There will be six Dell 2500 series computers in total, all made by Inspiron.

These computers run at about $2,000, Neely said. They have CD ROM, Access, Excel, all of the Microsoft applications, ethernet, and floppy disk drive. They are top of the line.

In order to obtain one of these valuable pieces of equipment, Neely says students must register at the station 24 hours in advance, which gives them the opportunity to check the background of the student, and make sure the student is enrolled at the University. After that, the student must fill a check-out form before receiving the computer. The rentals will be available for two hours at a time, but the computer can be renewed for two more hours if needed.

Geoffrey Nathan, academic coordinator for Information Technology, said the Student Technology Fee Committee decided to give the grant to the Information Center. There were certain guidelines that had to be met in order for the grant to be received. They wanted to know if the computers would be used directly by the students, and what audience of students it was aimed for.

There is a certain amount of money that is taken from the tuition to go toward student technology, he said. We had $830,000 to give out.

According to Nathan the committee goes through the list of requests, and the ones that best fit the criteria are selected. They received more than two and a half million dollars in requests.

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Tim Wills, chairman of the Student Technology Fee Committee, said at the beginning of the school year the deans and chairs of the colleges sent in proposals to the committee for review.

We selected 20 proposals from the list, Willis said. Then we evaluated them and looked at how each of them benefited the students. We ended up funding 16 departments.

Neely said the availability of computers in the Student Center will make life for students much more convenient as the period of mid-terms, reports and finals become closer and closer to reality.

I think the fact that we have computer rental is going to make things far easier for the students. Now they don’t have to go to the library, they can do their work in the Student Center. I am sure the students will really like this, Neely said.

Reporter Ivan Thomas can be reached at [email protected]